Allen Walker's crowded Decembers:
episodes in the long, colorful life of one of Laredo's
most controversial residents

By Robert Mendoza

"My crowded hour had begun."
--Theodore Roosevelt
(on his assault of San Juan Hill, which propelled him to the U.S. Presidency and an eternity on Mount Rushmore)

During the last seven years, I have looked into Laredo stories of local and international interest: the 1922 assassination of General Lucio Blanco (LareDOS, Jan-Feb 1997), the Garza War of 1891-94 (LareDOS, Nov-Dec 2002), and the 1915-17 Plan de San Diego (LareDOS, June 2003). In all of these research projects, one name kept re-appearing: the intriguing figure of Allen Walker, who played a role in each of these historically significant dramas.
Walker, one of the many colorful and controversial residents of Laredo, lived an eventful life that resembled a screenplay for Republic Pictures. In his variegated appearances on the streets of Laredo history, Walker seemed blessed with a virtuoso actor's range of characterizations.
In 1891, during the Garza War, Walker debuted as a young cavalryman who rode hell-bent-for-leather to foil a Mexican invasion of the U.S. and on to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Some 20 years later, in the midst of the Plan de San Diego crisis, Walker accepted a modest supporting role as a shadowy U.S. peace officer who provided an alibi for a rogue Texas Ranger accused of murdering a Mexican army major.
Then, in 1925 (the height of Prohibition), Walker himself was cast as the villain -- a conflicted Bogartesque deputy marshal who, after being arraigned on a bootlegging charge, made a dramatic escape from the Laredo courthouse.
Perhaps Walker's most memorable casting stemmed from his indictment for the 1922 murder of Lucio Blanco in 1922. Mexico's sinister President Calles provided an absolutely convincing cameo role as Walker's mentor and co-conspirator. And finally, to conclude this flogging of the cinematic metaphor, Walker's final role in the 1950s was a border variant of Dustin Hoffman's character in the film Little Big Man. At 86, Walker spun tales and conjured up legends that disregarded the factual details of his youthful heroism and escapades.
When discussing the lives of individuals like Walker who came of age in the last decade of the 19th century, cinematic parallels are difficult to avoid. Viewed from our post-cyberpunk, digitally disabused era, the vibrant years that saw the closing of the frontier and the concomitant pursuit of the first American empire were populated by dynamic, larger-than-life characters and awe-inspiring heroes. The post-9/11 government and media's mawkish efforts to transform victims and public servants into "heroes" (including the more recent apotheosis of Pvt. Jessica Lynch), make us aware of what a long sad trip it's been since the heyday of the first cowboy President.
Of course, it must be admitted that the earlier imperial era had its quite appalling downside. The presence of guileless, often roughhewn characters who spoke their minds and kept their word was offset by an environment of social Darwinism. Monopolistic trusts red in tooth and claw, virulent epidemics, oppressive labor conditions, and other long-banished calamities ensured that only the privileged and those with true grit prospered. The Gilded Age was an era when not-yet-feminized American men were men and banana republics around the globe trembled at their approach: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, Philippines, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Vera Cruz, Nicaragua, Peking, Chihuahua.

South Texas 1891: Saddlebags Vital to the Interests of the United States
On August 23, 1889, Private Allen Walker, a native of Patriot, Indiana, signed on for another five years in the U.S. Army. His choice of the 3rd Cavalry dispatched him to Fort Ringgold in torrid South Texas. It is safe to assume that Walker had never heard of Catarina Garza, or could imagine the transformation that Garza's actions would work upon his life.
Autumn of 1891 marked the advent of the small-scale raids and skirmishes that yellow journalists managed to inflate into what became known as the Garza War. Catarino Garza was a Mexico-born freelance journalist who published a series of short-lived newspapers along the Texas border from Del Rio to Brownsville. He secured the admiration of South Texas Mexicanos with his fiery speeches in defense of minority rights and his promotion of mutualista, or Mexican self-improvement societies.
However, Garza was most notorious for his vehement opposition to the dictatorship of Mexico's Porfirio Diaz. Beginning in November 1891, Garza and a handful of lieutenants led armed incursions into Tamaulipas. Mexico soon brought diplomatic pressure on the U.S. State Department, which responded by deploying U.S. army units to the border. The commanders of Fort McIntosh at Laredo and Fort Ringgold in Rio Grande City were assigned the responsibility of enforcing the Neutrality Laws and thwarting Captain Garza and his irregulars.
Garza's raiders, who never numbered more than 100, selected only isolated Mexican villages as their targets, and they were loathe to engage any Mexican military force that they did not outnumber ten to one. Occasionally, a Texas ranch was stripped of livestock or supplies, and on December 19, a squad of U.S. cavalry was ambushed near Retamal in Starr County, where a corporal was killed and an officer was wounded. This incident, sensationally headlined across the state, marked the beginning of the end for Garza's revolution. The U.S. army intensified patrols and instituted house searches, while the Texas Rangers began to shoot the flushed-out Mexicanos like rabbits. Four months later, Garza had fled the U.S. Despite the desultory activity of Garza diehards and of opportunistic livestock rustlers posing as revoltosos (who could hide in the vast brushlands between Laredo and Corpus Christi), even the journalists were forced to admit the "war" had ended in 1894.
On December 21, 1891, U.S. Army Private Allen Walker was returning from dispatch duty when he spotted three armed Mexicanos sitting around a campfire near Randado in present-day Jim Hogg County. Aiming a 10-gauge shotgun at the men, he demanded their surrender. When the smoke cleared, the Mexicanos had vanished into the brush, leaving behind a mortally wounded horse. Walker removed the saddlebags and repaired to Fort Ringgold, where his commander, 3rd Cavalry Captain John Bourke, identified the contents as Catarino Garza's revolutionary pamphlets, lists of officers, and inventories of supplies and livestock. Bourke congratulated Walker on his alacrity and initiated the process of securing him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Bourke was so expeditious that Walker received the medal on April 25, 1892 for "gallantry in securing papers vital to the interests of the U.S."
Walker, age 25, had been a soldier for seven years. He was duly promoted to sergeant (farrier) and began to receive a two-dollar-per-month Medal of Honor pay supplement. Later that year, Walker and Bourke traveled to Washington to be feted, along with the year's other outstanding soldiers at a Hall of Honor. Harper's Weekly published a glowing account of the affair, featuring photographs of Walker and Bourke.
Those familiar with the protocols surrounding the nation's most prestigious military honor will be puzzled by the circumstances of Walker's award. It must be noted that this was not the Medal of Honor earned by Audie Murphy (1945), Cleto Rodriguez (1945), or Roy Benavides (1968); the standards for qualification were successively ramped upward in 1897, 1917, and 1918. However, if we examine the cited action according to the regulations extant in 1891, the award remains problematic. First, the incontrovertible evidence of two eyewitnesses was required. Walker was alone, hence his "gallantry" in confronting three armed enemies. On the other hand, if we assume the presence of two witnesses, most likely fellow cavalrymen, the gallantry vanishes, for trained soldiers would be expected to easily prevail over Garza's motley crews.
Of course, either version of the Randado incident would inspire another line of questioning from Chicano writers bent on racial reinvindication. My fellow Austinites José Limon and his late mentor Americo Paredes, both scholars of the Garza War, would demand to know what Bourke's rules of engagement were, and specifically how Walker determined that the non-uniformed Mexicanos were Garzistas. Then as now, it was common and legal for South Texans to be armed on ranch premises. The professors would also want to know why Walker was wielding an unsportsmanlike weapon prohibited by army regulations.
However, I believe that presentist (judging historical events by our contemporary standards) denunciations are, well, unsportsmanlike, and I have no interest in going there. Walker, a lowly private, did not petition for the medal. It is Captain Bourke's motivation that interests me. Bourke was not only the hard-riding commander of Company C, but also that rarest of creatures on Officers' Row, an intellectual who had interrupted reading the proofs of his latest book to peer into Walker's captured saddlebags.
The most facile explanation for his recommendation was that there were no lesser decorations available with which to award Walker. The "fruit salad" expanse of ribbons adorning the breasts of generals briefing CNN on the situation in Iraq did not exist prior to 1918, and most of these were established after the 1930s. Nowadays, Walker would most likely have received the Bronze Star for his action.
Another explanation for Captain Bourke's citation might be a desire to counter press criticism of the Army and deflate journalist hyperbole on behalf of Garza. But Bourke's personality argues against this interpretation. The Captain was an obdurate curmudgeon who was contemptuous of any civilian inkslinger's estimation of Garza's ability to do anything but lurk in the chaparral. Bourke's assessment of Garza as more Quixote than Quantrill further begs the question of why he cited Walker's saddlebag seizure as "vital to the interests of the United States."
Bourke did not begin to feel serious political pressure until late 1892, when influential South Texans protested his illegal searches and harassment of Mexicanos. Bourke had further outraged his critics when he humiliated Garza's wealthy father-in-law at Palito Blanco (adding insult to injury by "collecting" Garza's saddle for the Smithsonian). Eventually, the army would transfer Bourke out of Texas to avoid his conviction in a Starr County court.
Perhaps the key to understanding Bourke's motivation for honoring Walker lies in the earlier Retamal ambush in which Corporal Edstrom lost his life. Walker's fortuitous seizure of the saddlebags occurred less than a week after the ambush of his Company C comrades. Bourke, being the sort of commander who is a surrogate father to his men, may have reasoned that it was only proper to honor one of the slain trooper's bunkmates. Perhaps this is as good an explanation as any.
What remains inexplicable is the speed at which Walker's citation was processed. (Bourke waited 24 years to receive his own Medal of Honor.) The expeditious nature of the award to Walker was certainly not due to any Army leverage enjoyed by Bourke, a man so bereft of influence that he could not hold on to a Washington desk job and prevent his transfer to South Texas. And despite having successfully driven Garza out of the country, Bourke remained a captain until his death in 1896.

The Philippine Interlude
Allen Walker's five-year hitch with the 3rd Cavalry ended in August 1894. He immediately re-enlisted for an additional five years in the 18th Infantry Regiment, which carried him through the Spanish American War and into the Philippine Insurrection.
The Spanish-American War of 1898 pitted the overweening youthful brawn of the United States against a doddering Spanish Empire. It was indeed a "splendid little war" with hostilities limited to less than eight months and a loss of fewer than 800 American lives. The December 1898 Treaty of Paris garnered the U.S. a vast, varied, and strategic treasure trove of real estate in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Philippines.
However, the Philippine insurgents, who had spent years organizing resistance to their Spanish oppressors, refused to become part of the nascent Yankee Empire. Emilio Aguinaldo's highly organized veteran insurrectos had been vital to the American victory in the Battle of Manila, which signaled the end of Spanish control of the archipelago. In February 1899, Filipinos turned their guns on the Americans and the Philippine Insurrection was on. The initial, mostly conventional military campaign lasted until November 1899, but after American victories at Papanga, Tarlac, and Pangasinan, the Filipinos were forced to adopt guerilla tactics. The U.S. was about to undergo its first experience into what would later become known as Vietnam-style conflicts.
This first modern war was marred by the U.S. Army's use of concentration camps, massacres of civilians, village burning, torture, and wholesale shooting of prisoners. The insurrectos were also guilty of atrocities (notably mutilation of corpses). However, the behavior of U.S. troops was a rude awakening for an American public long accustomed to condemning European colonial practices. Anti-imperialists led by Mark Twain staged protests, and sensationalized newspaper coverage of the war soon forced Congressional hearings. The most sanguinary commanders received high-profile courts martial and were relieved of duty.
Meanwhile, the war continued. The under-armed and -supplied "gugus" (as the U.S. troops referred to the enemy) devised ingenious booby traps like pits filled with sharpened bamboo stakes. They infiltrated "friendly" villages, where Americans were subsequently ambushed by priests, women, and even children.
American soldiers did not hesitate to reply in kind. The dirty war got uglier and the casualty figures are explicit. Compared to the official U.S. Army body count of 20,000 Filipinos, American combat deaths totaled 4,234. A more dire statistic was that 15 insurrectionists were reported killed for every one wounded. (This is the reverse of usual battlefield proportions of those killed and wounded, and indicates that prisoners and those attempting to surrender were routinely shot.)
Nevertheless, once Aguinaldo was captured and the insurrectos suffered a series of crushing defeats, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the war over on July 4, 1902. Sporadic resistance continued for years on many of the 7,000 islands that comprised 500,000 square miles. The spring of 1913 found General John Pershing engaged in a desperate battle against the Jolo Moros (Moslems) on Mindanao. (In 2002, the U.S. dispatched special operations troops to this island in pursuit of Al Queda-aligned Islamist guerillas.)
Congressional authority for the volunteer army serving in the Philippines had expired on July 1, 1901, with little chance of renewal. The need for fresh troops to assist the regular army let to the formation of the Philippine Scouts. (An act of February 1902 allowed for the selection of Scout officers from the ranks of American non-commissioned officers serving in-country. They could command Filipinos recruited from those sizable segments of the population who were loyal to the United States.)
On June 30, 1901, Sgt Allen Walker of the 18th Infantry resigned to accept a commission as 1st lieutenant in the Philippine Scouts. After seven years of satisfactory service, he was promoted to Captain. He served in the Philippines until 1911.
Walker's 30 years of military service in the long interim between the Civil War and World War I insured that his army duties were largely of a constabulary (police or counter-insurgency) nature. His service in South Texas falls under the rubric of the Indian Wars, although the "hostile" Garzistas and other Mexican violators of the Neutrality Laws were not considered Indians.
Walker's Philippine years had many areas of commonality with his South Texas service. The climate of both Spanish-speaking regions was often oppressive and the largely Anglo troops lived among an impoverished and subjugated population that often violently resented their presence. It required a strong character and constitution to survive the isolation, disease, and boredom of service in the boondocks of America and Asia.
Of course, there were many romantic, eccentric, or deviant individuals who thrived in barren or exotic environments, and the rewards for those who chose to rough it were many. Army pay went much further in the Antipodes, and enlisted men managed to save or wire money to relatives. Army regulations tended to be more lax in isolated barracks, and alcohol abuse -- even on the part of senior officers -- was pervasive. And, of course, there were all those exotic, sultry, and indigent women.

1925: Slouching Toward Palestine
Allen Walker departed the Army at Fort Bliss, Texas, having re-enlisted and retired as Sergeant-Major of the 23rd Infantry Regiment. This was a humiliating forced march for someone who had performed an officer's job for a decade in the Philippines.
The Army was dragging its feet in the matter of fully recognizing the Philippine Scouts' officers. These were resented by the cadre of regular Army officers who had attended West Point, endured long years of waiting to achieve seniority, and had sat for countless exams and fitness evaluations. However, the Philippines Scouts' lobby finally prevailed, and on June 2, 1916, Walker was placed on the retired officers' list. In 1920, he began to receive pension benefits equal to those of regular Army officers.
I haven't been able to determine how or when Walker became Deputy U.S. Marshall at Laredo. At press time, the National Archives have not replied, and no information was forthcoming from Walker's descendents in Laredo.
However, the Laredo Daily Times cites Deputy Marshall Walker several times during the 1915-17 Plan de San Diego crisis. It was he who apprehended Francisco de Leon, the 10-year-old who participated in the June 15 attack on U.S. soldiers in San Ignacio. Walker also transported the diminutive Carranzista raider to Laredo where he was photographed in front of the Hamilton Hotel, holding a bomb and a (presumably unloaded) gun.
On July 12, 1916, the badly decomposed body of Carranzista Major Jesse Moseley (an African-American) was found in a field in southeast Laredo. Former Ranger Captain Tom Ross (who had arrested Moseley in a brothel on June 30) was charged with murder. Ross was acquitted on the alibi testimony of Deputy U.S. Marshall Walker.
The state's case was based upon the sworn statements of Mexicano ranch hands who had witnessed Ross and his ranch foreman dumping Moseley's body. It was a common practice for Mexican authorities to hire Rangers and other border law enforcement agents to "dispose of" troublesome Mexican exiles in Texas.
Nine years later, on December 10, 1925, Walker's Studebaker roadster was searched by U.S. customs agents at the Laredo International Bridge. Eight cases (96 bottles) of Pepper's Bonded Whiskey were seized and Walker was taken to the Federal courthouse.
Inexplicably, the two agents left Walker standing outside while they went upstairs to process his arrest. When they returned with the completed forms, Walker had vanished. According to the December 11 Laredo Times, the wily Philippine Scout had calmly "walked to his bank, drew out his balance, went home and packed, and accompanied by another Party, left for parts unknown."
"Officers Here Arrest Aged Man Wanted in Laredo" was a Page One featured headline of the December 12, 1925 Palestine Herald. Anderson County Sheriff Rogers and Chief of Police Tomkins boarded the smoking car of the International and Great Northern Railroad's "Sunshine Special" and arrested Walker, 59, who readily admitted his identity. He was taken to the county jail.
In a jailhouse interview, Walker told the Herald that the smuggling charge was the result of a foolish blunder. He had drunk too much while in Nuevo Laredo and had unthinkingly loaded the liquor into his car. When taken into custody, Walker had $600 and was en route to Hot Springs, Arkansas. La Prensa, San Antonio's Spanish-language journal of record, reminded its readers that this was the same Walker who had had similar trafficking problems recently in Cotulla.
On December 13, Webb County Deputy Sheriff Carrejo returned Walker to Laredo; in less than a week, Walker was indicted on a charge of "transporting intoxicating liquors." Again, inexplicably, Walker was allowed to post bond and was cut loose. On December 28, District Judge Mulally declared Walker's $1,000 bond forfeited when he failed to appear in court.
On this flight from prosecution, Walker did not head for Hot Springs; he went to the cool Mexican mountains of Nuevo Leon. He managed to arrange for his army officer's and Medal of Honor pension checks to be forwarded to Sabinas-Hidalgo, the closest post office to Cerralvo, where he was reputed to be exploiting an abandoned silver mine.

December 1929:
And the Horse You Rode in On;
The DA Indicts Just About Everybody
Walker's third "crowded" December actually began on November 7, 1929, when he was indicted (along with Bexar County Constable Duke Carver) by a Webb County Grand Jury for the1922 murders of Mexican General Lucio Blanco and his friend, Colonel Aurelio Martinez.
The two men, who had been in Laredo plotting a revolution against Mexico's president, Alvaro Obregon, vanished from their rooms on the night of June 7. Two days later, their bodies, handcuffed together, were fished out of the Río Grande. The incident provoked outrage along the border and throughout Mexico. Lucio Blanco was one of the most respected of the revolutionaries who had toppled the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.
District Attorney John Valls' case against Walker was largely built upon the eyewitness testimony of Joe Hobrecht, a notorious rumrunner who had been indicted for the murder of a Prohibition agent in San Antonio. Grand jury proceedings are sealed, so one can only hazard a guess that Hobrecht, after a falling-out, "dropped a dime" on his former associates in liquor transport. Valls' indictment was also inspired by the revelations of Nuevo Laredo's military commander General Leopoldo Dorantes.
Dorantes' testimony was featured in the November 10, 1929 Laredo Times ("Blood Curdling Tale Told of Laredo Intrigue"), wherein the General described Walker's attempt to abduct and murder him in 1916. Dorantes further asserted that Walker was at that time employed by Carranza, but continued to offer his services to succeeding Mexican governments. In 1922, Walker and his associates had been paid by President Obregon and his Minister of the Interior Calles to assassinate Blanco.
District Attorney Valls, who enjoyed the admiration and respect of many influential officials in Mexico, began the process of extraditing Walker from Mexico. Many Laredoans were outraged that the fugitive continued to receive his pension and brazenly socialized with friends in Nuevo Laredo.
Despite the fact that the Brookhart Committee of the U.S. Senate (meeting in Dallas in the summer of 1928) had looked into the circumstances of Walker's 1925 escape, the Federal bootlegging charge was allowed to lapse. However, Valls knew that the state of Texas' case remained open and he felt confident that his man would be extradited. It must also be noted that, in 1929, Mexico was assiduously applying the death penalty to far too many of its own citizens, and would have had no qualms turning over an American.
Matters were looking pretty grim for Walker when fortune again smiled upon him -- the famous luck that had allowed him to escape sunstroke and seize fortuitous saddlebags in South Texas and later avoid bolos and dysentery in the Philippines had not abandoned him. Valls' prosecutorial zeal was about to precipitate the DA into a colossal blunder.
In the first week of December, Valls was informed that President Calles (recently confined to a clinic in Paris) was returning to Mexico via the United States. Calles' train was scheduled to transit the border at Laredo. Valls hastily reconvened his grand jury and pushed through an indictment of the Mexican leader for having orchestrated the Lucio Blanco killings.
The indictment set off a firestorm of diplomatic consternation. The Mexican government reacted with a boycott of the U.S., the brunt of which hit Laredo merchants who had been anticipating an influx of Christmas shoppers. The Laredo Chamber of Commerce held a vitriolic emergency meeting that demanded Valls' immediate resignation. The district attorney, reeling from a wave of local indignation and mounting criticism by officials in Austin, was informed in mid-December that the U.S. State Department had not only granted Calles immunity, but had also arranged for troops to escort Calles through Laredo and across the Río Grande.
Valls' reaction was to indulge in a self-righteous tantrum. Summoning the press on December 17, he railed at the State Department's immunizing of Calles. "Why should American citizens [Walker and Carver] not benefit from the same immunity granted the arch-conspirator in this drama of guilt and murder? American citizenship will never be a handicap to anyone (tried) in my district. I am dismissing the charges."
Once again, Walker had been cut loose. He prudently remained in Mexico for a few more years before returning to Laredo. I have not been able to determine what became of the 1925 case pending against him. The Laredo merchants eventually calmed down, and Valls was not forced to resign, but ascended to a District Court judgeship that he held until his death in 1948.
Walker's remaining 24 years were spent in a presumably relieved obscurity. In 1952, he was interviewed by the San Antonio Star Telegram on the occasion of becoming the oldest living "Medal of Honor Man."
The 86-year-old Walker regaled the reporters with a spirited account of how he won the medal fighting Apache warriors while trapped in a West Texas canyon near the Pecos River. The reporters were too polite to note that Geronimo and his people had surrendered in Arizona in 1888, and were disgruntled but peaceful residents of Alabama in 1891.
(Note: Curiously, Walker's Republic Pictures version of how he won the Medal has, thanks to a slipshod researcher, received the imprimatur of the New Handbook of Texas.)